Hi,

Can anyone tell me if the Team System Editions of Visual Studio will include the functionality to reverse-engineer databases?

I use Visio for Enterprise Architects (VEA) because I often need the database reverse-engineering functionality. This VEA plug-in is not part of the standard Visio included with Office, and it is one of the reasons I currently have MSDN Universal.

This page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/subscriptions/ indicates that "Productivity Apps (including Office, Project, Visio)" are included in MSDN profesional and higher, including the various team system editions, but it does not give details.

Having the reverse engineering functionality will again be a factor when deciding which version of Visual Studio to go for, and I would be grateful for any help with this.

I believe that Visio EA will be included in MSDN Premium, I'm not sure about MSDN Pro.

Visio for Enterprise Architects is planned to be included in several of the Team System SKUs.

My understanding is that it will be included in:
    Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
    Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
and of course:
    Microsoft? Visual Studio? 2005 Team Suite

Let us know if you have additional questions,

Visio for Enterprise Architects is included in MSDN Premium, which is available with Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Team System role-based editions.

It is a separate program and a separate install but must be installed on the same computer as Visual Studio.

After you install it, you can access it as a stand-alone program from the Start menu, or you can start it from within Visual Studio. To start it from within Visual Studio, open a project from Solution Explorer, then click the Project menu, point to Visio UML, and then click Reverse Engineer.

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182014.aspx in the Visual Studio product documentation for more details.

Julie MacAller

User Education Manager, Visual Studio Team System

Steven (and Julie MacAller below),

I am trying to figure out how I can obtain database modeling, going in both directions (i.e. update AND reverse engineering), prior to purchasing any VS 2005 * products in our company.  It is my understanding that this is only with Visio for EA.

That being said, Steven you stated above that it is in VS 2005 Team Edition for Software [Architects|Developers] and VS 2005 Team Suite.  Is it ONLY in these products, or can it also be found in other products?  If so, which ones?

Why this information is not readily available is beyond me, as the following link does not explicitly answer the question:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/compare/default.aspx

Ultimately all I need to know is which products contain Visio that allow both forward and reverse engineering of DBs.  Any help would be appreciated and simple links to the info would be great.

Thanks,
David

David,

If you did go ahead with Visio EA, you may want to check out Terry Halpin's book "Database Modeling with Microsoft Visio for Enterprise Architects".

Although the book focuses on ORM it does have a wealth of information about the database aspect of Visio in general, and a good explanation of the forward / reverse engineering process in Visio. There are quite a few issues to be aware of and the book is good at pointing these out.

Unfortunately the book is now somewhat dated, just like Visio EA itself, which is a great shame. For this reason I feel that VS 2005 is a little disappointing with regard to modelling tools for ordinary programmers. Even small-scale projects with modest budgets need decent modelling tools.